One of the customer convenience features now found on many vehicles is a folding armrest mounted to a seatback frame instead of having the armrest on the vehicle side door. This type of armrest mounting allows the armrest to rotate when the seatback is reclined to maintain armrest comfort with any seatback angle and is generally most cost effective. Many sport utility vehicles only have two side doors with two rows of seats. Whether or not the front row seating reclines is highly desirable to provide an inertia seatback so that when the seat is bent over to allow access to the rear of the vehicle, the occupant does not first have to release a manually-operable lock.
To allow the vehicle seatback to pivot forward without utilizing a manually-operable lock, there is what is termed an inertia latch mechanism. The inertia latch mechanism allows the seatback to be pulled forward under regular conditions, but in a sudden deceleration of the vehicle typically experienced in an accident, the latch locks the position of the seatback with respect to the remainder of the seat, preventing the seatback from pivoting forward in a crash condition. In instances where the armrest is connected to the vehicle door, inertia locks are suitable. However, when the armrest is pivotally mounted to the vehicle seatback such as in a "captain" chair, armrest loading may cause the inertia locking device to become unlatched during driving, which could possibly violate Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 207 (FMVSS 207). It would be highly desirable to offer captain-type seating in the front row of van or sport utility vehicles which also has a pivotally-mounted armrest and an inertia latch feature for customer convenience in accessing the rear row seating of the vehicle.